


the heavens we will give to each other

by intergaylactic



Series: each soul a universe (an infinity war & endgame au) [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anyway pls enjoy, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, bc taika did not give us the gift of ragnarok for nothing, i consider this fixing lmao, these are my kids and i want them to learn to be happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26720365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intergaylactic/pseuds/intergaylactic
Summary: “It’ll be okay,” she whispered, running her hand very slowly through his hair. “I know, alright, I understand, it seems hopeless. But there’s never nothing, do you understand me? You never have nothing, not forever.” She felt something aching rise in her throat, but she pushed it down. Later. Today, her tears were for later. “Everyone out there wants you to live, wants to do it with you. Fuck, I want to do it with you. Loki gave you that chance, and fucking hell, Thor, you owe it to him to at least try.”He took a deep, ragged breath, and then another, and leaned carefully away from Brunnhilde to look up at her. His eyes were red and glassy, but she saw the slightest steel in them. She’d missed that look.“I owe him that.”
Relationships: Brunnhilde | Valkyrie & Thor (Marvel), Brunnhilde | Valkyrie/Thor (Marvel)
Series: each soul a universe (an infinity war & endgame au) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1910224
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	the heavens we will give to each other

Striking the cockpit shield of a spaceship was one of the worst ways Thor had ever woken up. 

The sensation of the slam seemed to echo up his bones, thrumming through his every nerve. He tried to breathe, and realized there was no air for him to do so. Everything around him was darkness, the blinking specks of stars in the distance, and then the blinding lights of the ship he had crashed into. 

He floated for what could have been minutes or hours; time felt sluggish around him in the vacuum of space. Though he knew being out there would not kill him - despite his personal thoughts on the matter, he was still physically a demigod - Thor longed to breathe. He needed to feel the weight of his own body, kneel somewhere to take stock of everything. The memories flashing through his mind necessitated yelling. 

Hands clasped onto his breastplate, then climbed to grab him by the arm. He let himself loose from the cockpit shield, bonelessly dragged behind a figure he could not quite make out through the haze that clouded his vision. Soon enough, he was dropping to his knees on a cold metal floor, and gasping as he held himself up on all fours. The shoes of strangers surrounded him on all sides, but he could hardly force himself to care. 

_ Loki’s eyes, icy blue, wide in shock. His body collapsed against the floor of the ruined ship, his chest heaving as he clutched the ragged edge of the debris impaling him. Thor grasped desperately for his brother, but could not reach him.  _

_ Brunnhilde, limp on the floor, her sword skittering somewhere too far for her to rearm herself. A trickle of blood leaked from her hairline, her eyes closed. Thor could not reach her either.  _

_ The floor of the ship opening up, bodies falling into space. More of his people, slaughtered, their world halved in two. Thanos’ grim solemnity as he dropped Thor into the void of the cosmos, his body failing him as he tried to fight.  _

“Hey, dude, are you okay -?”

Thor looked up, warily scanning the set of curious faces. A woman with enormous, glistening black eyes stretched out a hand to help him slowly to his feet. As their skin met, she let out a hideous gasp. 

“All of them?” She whispered, her face turning to stare out at the world beyond their ship. 

Thor turned, too, his jaw trembling as he did. 

“I don’t know.” 

* * *

The ship was a wreck. That was the first thought Brunnhilde had as she looked around, slowly peeling herself off the floor. She felt like one giant bruise, and she groaned as she swiped at her forehead; her hand came away sticky with blood. 

“Thor! Loki!” She yelled, and then froze. 

Not ten feet from her was Loki’s prone body. 

She sprinted, as well as she could with the ache radiating through her leg; something was definitely sprained. Brunnhilde dropped to her knees, turning him over, her fingers searching for a pulse. But the moment her hand met his skin, colder than the space outside the torn-up ship, she knew it was a lost cause. His eyes were open, and blank in a way that was sickeningly familiar to her. 

“ _ No _ .” 

Brunnhilde combed the ship for what felt like hours. She found few survivors, and many, many bodies. Several children had tucked themselves away in an alcove, up in the ship’s storage unit; she spent the better part of an hour coaxing them out of it, instructing them to look only at her, not down at the floor. They made a line, hands linked in a chain, and they tip-toed behind her as she maneuvered for them, quietly easing out a path for them among the dead. She made sure they kept their eyes up at her or the ceiling as they walked - the last thing any of them needed was to witness anymore death. 

But when one of them screamed, Brunnhilde knew it was too late for that. 

“Inga, stop -” began one of the elder children, shushing the younger girl, but he, too let out an ugly yell as he followed the aim of her shaking, pointed finger, up through an opening in the ship’s roof. 

Brunnhilde looked up, too, and squinted, staring into space. It wasn’t until she had waited for it to float closer to her line of sight that she could make out the first body. 

She corralled the children and the handful of surviving adults into a corner of the ship, and left them with a command of “Don’t move, don’t do anything stupid” before she was climbing up to the roof of the ship.

The sight she was met with struck her like a kick to the gut. She hauled herself half-out of the ship, and stared out into the yawning void of the cosmos in horror. 

Asgardians drifted through space in every direction, lifeless and alien. Brunnhilde gagged for a moment, holding herself steady and trying not to retch on the outside of the ship. But she hadn’t seen a massacre of this scale in centuries, and she found herself desperately shoving aside the memories of her fallen sisters from so long ago. 

She watched helplessly as they drifted, uncertain of what to do. She couldn’t just jump out, or she would drift away, too. Maybe there was rope on the ship? She could go as far as possible, try to haul them back. She couldn’t tell how many were dead, though some could have survived. 

The blast of bright, white light that appeared before her eyes had her reaching for her sword, though she wasn’t sure what good it would do her now. As her arm lowered from her eyes, Brunnhilde saw an odd silhouette begin to emerge from the light: a ship, then two, then a small fleet. A tiny, secondary vessel branched off from one and came hurtling towards her; Brunnhilde raised her sword as it awkwardly docked on the side of the Asgardian vessel, as if it could protect her or anyone else from a ship’s blaster.

But the ship’s docking portal opened, and someone exited. The figure that emerged was wearing a spacesuit, so evidently not Asgardian, as they were fragile enough to need a suit. They moved with purpose, zipping through the space with the help of small propulsion engines on their boots. The suit offered a view of their face, and Brunnhilde didn’t lower her weapon even as she took in the soft eyes, the sympathy brimming in them. Thanos had come to their ship and called his slaughter “mercy”; Brunnhilde was done trusting other people’s judgement of their own actions. 

“You’re from Asgard?” The figure asked; their voice was vaguely muffled by the suit.

Brunnhilde nodded slowly. 

“We were sent by a Thor of Asgard. He said you’d need rescuing, and to check if someone called Brunnhilde is alive.” 

She felt her chest seize up as if suddenly weightless, and the phantom buoyancy made her instinctively clutch at the rim of the hole in the ship a bit tighter, as if nervous to drift away from the vessel entirely. Below her, she could hear the distant calls of the other survivors, but all she could think for a long moment was of Thor, alive somewhere, sending out a distress signal for her. 

“She is,” Brunnhilde said, the words choked by the pressing airlessness of space. “And who are you?” 

“I’m a representative of the Nova Corps,” the figure said, and smiled a bit wryly. “And, for once, this is actually my job.” 

Brunnhilde wasn’t sure what he was implying there or who the Nova Corps were, but she nodded anyway. “Good. We have - there are some survivors inside. It’s not pretty. And out there, some of them -” she gestured to the Asgardians in the air with the hand holding her sword. She was still reluctant to sheath it, and she didn’t really care if these Nova Corps people wanted her to. “They might be alive.” 

“Well, might is better than definitely not,” the figure said, and turned to go back to his small vessel. “We’ll dock one of the larger ships so you can all come aboard. And don’t worry,” he added, turning in mid-air to give her a knowing, slightly exasperated smile, “you can keep your weapons.” 

Brunnhilde hadn’t intended to relinquish her sword, but smiled back in a way that suggested otherwise. It would be nice for their new potential allies to at least vaguely trust her for now. 

When she clambered back down to where the survivors huddled, they watched her with terrified, questioning faces. 

“Thor sent a distress signal,” she said, trying her best to sound like a leader. Gods, she hadn’t had to do this in so many years, she had forgotten what an uncomfortable role it was, like a pair of shoes that were never meant to get worn in. “He’s alive, and we’re boarding their ship.” 

The little girl who had let loose that first piercing scream - Inga - took Brunnhilde’s hand as they made their way across the wreckage to where the Nova Corps ship was slowly trying to dock against the ruined portal of their ship. Brunnhilde glanced down at her, but Inga was staring straight ahead, a slight clench in her little jaw, wiping away the tears on her little cheek. 

Brunnhilde held her little hand a bit tighter as they went to meet their rescuers. 

* * *

  
  
Brunnhilde could only keep her distance for so long. She had promised him as much time as he needed to think, to let himself feel the loss. But after three weeks without so much as a peep from the cottage he’d holed himself up in, she left that promise discarded on the gravel road outside and started her determined march up the steps to his front door. 

Her first knock was a bit gentle, despite the resolute set of her jaw as she waited, tapping her heel impatiently on the creaking porch. When several minutes had passed and she had heard nothing, Brunnhilde pounded her fist on the door; if she had to break it down, she would. 

The silence that angry knock was met with troubled her even more. At the very least, she had been confident in her chances at annoying him into opening up. Her frown deepened when she reached for the handle and found the door unlocked. 

So much for breaking it down. 

It swung open at her touch, and creaked as much as the porch. Though they were grateful to be given a space to rebuild what they could of their people, the town that the remaining Asgardians had settled in was nothing if not old and in disrepair. Brunnhilde thought there was probably a metaphor in there somewhere connecting the state of the buildings to the people now taking shelter in them, but the thought was too depressing to dwell on. She had bigger things to worry about - like the demigod wallowing in this cottage. 

She closed the door behind her, and carefully tread through the cottage, her footsteps muffled slightly by the old carpeting on the floor. Dust motes drifted serenely through the air, as though nothing had come to disturb their life here in centuries. 

She found him in an upstairs bedroom.

At first she thought he was asleep, but as she came round to the other side of the bed she saw his eyes open, his gaze tracking her movements. 

“Are you wearing pants under there?” 

She hadn’t meant it as a joke, but Thor seemed to have taken it as an attempt at one; he scowled, though it didn’t seem to be at her. It was more general, as though he’d been waiting for a reason to. 

“Yes.” 

“Alright then. Get up.”

When he didn’t move, Brunnhilde came and hauled him up by one arm. Thor tried to shift away from her grip, but she was having none of it; she pulled him up so he was sitting, leaning one side against the headboard of the old bed he had nested in. The floor around the bed was littered with granola bar wrappers, and old apple cores stood at attention on the windowsill. The sunlight outside, which was already a little grey with overcast, filtered faintly through the time-warped glass. The whole room smelled stale and musty. Brunnhilde definitely didn’t think these were good mourning conditions. 

“You need to go outside,” she began plainly. 

Thor’s gaze darted to hers, and his piercing blue eyes brimmed with something all too familiar to her. “No.”

“No?” She echoed, arms folding over her chest. The softness of that first knock on the door had evacuated her mind completely by now; she was only left with exhaustion and indignance. “You don’t want to?”

“I don’t want to.” 

“What, do you think you’re more useful to all of us in here? Hiding away?”

“I’m useless to all of you no matter where I am!”

  
  


_ Every strike he tried to land seemed to glance right off of Thanos, his weapon useless. Still, he had to keep going; he knew what was at stake, very personally. He had seen what Thanos’ mercy looked like, and the idea of his feet touching the soil on Earth was enough to make Thor’s blood roil with fury. Letting him leave here with those Stones would mean certain death - which, given the amber gleam of the Soul Stone in his gauntlet, meant letting him leave at all.  _

_ He could hear Stark shouting something, and turned to face him in mid-air, skidding to a halt. His feet left deep grooves in the ground, like claw marks.  _

_ “Somebody go with Strange, get him out of here!” Stark yelled, sending another blast directly at Thanos’ face. His suit was beginning to look a little worse for wear, and Thor watched as another chunk of it flaked away as he took another hard strike to the chest from the Titan.  _

_ “I’ll -” Thor began, but was cut off by the slam of a boulder to his chest, sending him flying. He couldn’t catch his footing, and he tumbled along the hard ground, already feeling the ache of bruises where he struck the rock. He came to a stop a hundred yards from Thanos and Stark, watched as Stark took more and more damage. His body, so human, seemed smaller and more breakable than ever as Thor watched, struggling to get to his feet.  _

_ It was from there that he saw the jagged debris slice right through Stark’s ribs.  _

_ “No - wait -” he choked the words out, barely a whisper, as he stumbled a few steps before dropping to one knee.  _

_ Stark fell bonelessly to the ground, all his energy clearly spent. The Guardians rushed forward, Gamora and Nebula wielding twin blades, Quill’s blaster already shooting. Their blows were meaningless to Thanos, who swatted at them like insects. Thor took another few heavy steps forward, picking up speed. His lungs expanded more and more every second. He could still stop this.  _

_ Watching Strange hand over the Time Stone made his vision go red.  _

_ “No!” He was running, his body striking Thanos’, the world around them swirling into pure darkness. When reality returned, sharp and off-kilter, Thor hit the ground hard. Grass was beneath him, and he groaned, reaching for the weapon he no longer held.  _

Thor’s voice caught near the end of his exclamation, and Brunnhilde felt something in her chest crack a tiny bit. It was an old wound, healed over and rough with scar-tissue, but she felt a phantom pain right where her heart broke so many centuries ago. Her hand went up, an act of pure instinct, and was halfway to Thor’s shoulder when he caught her by the wrist. 

“I know it isn’t something you want to hear,” he began, his voice forcefully calm. It sounded painful in his throat. “But it’s the truth. I cannot mislead those people -”

“The people who want you to join them?” Brunnhilde meant for it to be angry, but her question came out softer, like that first knock. That same sense of foreboding, of the dreadful approach of witnessing tragedy, moved her as she stood closer to him. He was eye level with her stomach, and she slowly pulled her hand from his loose grip to settle on the nape of his neck. It was the tenderest gesture she could think of that wouldn’t feel smothering. She knew he’d hate that, because she would’ve hated it, too. “The people who love you? Who want to know that you made it out, too?”

“What’s the use in surviving,” Thor muttered, his gaze dropping from hers and drifting past her, towards the filthy window. “I lived. So what. It means nothing.” 

“It means everything,” Brunnhilde hissed, giving the hair at the nape of his neck a quick tug. Thor’s head tilted back, and she held his gaze. “It means  _ everything  _ that you’re still alive. You know that, don’t be stupid.” 

_ Brunnhilde sprinted through the grass, Wakandan warriors and Avengers alike stumbling to a stop all around her. She had seen the first body disappear, crumbling like ash to be swept away by the gentle breeze. She knew somewhere the Asgardians were disappearing, too; somewhere, their people were being destroyed, unmade by Thanos. But Brunnhilde was going to let herself be selfish for a moment.  _

_ She didn’t stop when she hit the treeline, only kept running, darting through the underbrush. She had seen him go in here, seen the lightning crackle like a heavenly storm descending on the forest, so she kept running, her eyes searching desperately.  _

_ He was kneeling when she found him, axe discarded on the ground nearby. Brunnhilde dropped to her knees in front of him, chest heaving; she knew this would embarrass the living hell out of her later, but she had already seen Thanos slaughter one demigod.  _

_ Thor looked up at her, and for just a moment his eyes glimmered with relief.  _

_ His hands came up on the sides of her face, and Brunnhilde couldn’t stop running hers along his shoulders, down his upper arms, convincing herself he was  _ here  _ and  _ alive. 

“I’m not being stupid, I’m -”

“You’re being stupid,” she cut him off. “You can’t build anything if you’re dead.” 

“Who says I want to build anything?” Thor demanded. 

“Loki would want -”

“Oh, suddenly you’re an expert on what my brother would want?”

Thor wrenched himself away from her, and Brunnhilde glared down at him. “No, I’m not. But I know that he died trying to save you. I know that he risked his life to save your people, that he died trying to give all of us a shot at survival. So are you going to lie up here and waste that chance, or are you going to do something with it?” 

He paused, glaring back at her, and she noticed the shakiness of his face, like the ground before being split by an earthquake, right as the first sob ripped its way out of his chest. 

“Shit,” Brunnhilde muttered, moving with stuttering hands to try and placate him. “Wait, don’t -”

“No, it’s -” Thor shuddered, another sob easing its way out of him. “I need - it’s okay, I’ll be - I just need to -” 

He shuddered again as Brunnhilde’s hands came around his shoulders, fluttering uncomfortably. When he didn’t push her away, she gently wrapped her arms around him, letting him press his trembling face against her; she could feel him crying against her, reverberating through her ribcage. 

“It’ll be okay,” she whispered, running her hand very slowly through his hair. “I know, alright, I  _ understand _ , it seems hopeless. But there’s never nothing, do you understand me? You never have nothing, not forever.” She felt something aching rise in her throat, but she pushed it down. Later. Today, her tears were for later. “Everyone out there wants you to live, wants to do it with you. Fuck,  _ I  _ want to do it with you. Loki gave you that chance, and fucking hell, Thor, you owe it to him to at least try.” 

He took a deep, ragged breath, and then another, and leaned carefully away from Brunnhilde to look up at her. His eyes were red and glassy, but she saw the slightest steel in them. She’d missed that look. 

“I owe him that.” 

* * *

The view of sunrise from the docks was beautiful in a way that Thor could pretend felt like Asgard. Maybe it was childish of him, but this was something he wanted to cling to: the bright smudges of light on the horizon, its reflection growing as the sun climbed higher into the sky, resembled the bifrost road if he let his imagination run a little wild. It was the one piece of his childhood home that he let himself keep, paste over the pocket of earth that they had chosen to rebuild their lives in. 

Thor leaned back on his hands, watching yet another sunrise from the edge of the longest dock. The ocean water lapped at the wood beneath him, and shifted it slightly; the sway was comforting as he sat there. Six months after the snap, Thor was still coming out here to rest in the light of the sunrise and have a moment to pretend. 

He heard footsteps behind him, the dull thud of boots on the hollow dock, and hurried to turn and make himself seem busy. If anyone was to see him out here, wallowing in the memories of what they had all lost, he would have to explain a part of himself that he wanted to keep private for a while longer. 

But it was only Brunnhilde, her hair tossed into a messy ponytail, wrapped in layers of flannel and denim. She came and sat next to him, forcing him to shift to make room for her. She set a pair of mugs down in front of them, and gave him a tired, sardonic smile. 

“Don’t worry, yours is full of sugar,” she said, picking up her own mug as she settled herself down, legs crossed underneath her. Her fingers wrapped around so much of the mug, trying to leech away its heat, that they obscured the pattern of dancing polar bears that decorated it. Thor’s sported a similar pattern of wiggling seals, and his hands dwarfed it. It was delightfully warm, and Brunnhilde had not lied about the sugar she had relented and given his coffee. 

“This is better than usual,” Thor said, his voice scratchy with fatigue. 

“Mmm. That’s because I made it, and not Korg.”

“It’s a machine with one button, how could he make it poorly?”

“I dunno, ask him. Your coffee’s awful, too, so maybe you two can learn together.”

“You know what?” Thor turned and poured out his drink in the saltwater below them, his eyes not breaking contact with Brunnhilde’s as he pulled the now-empty mug to rest in his lap. “Maybe I don’t need your coffee.”

Brunnhilde’s face had broken into an expression of astonished outrage, though Thor could see the grin that was fighting to make an appearance as well. 

“Maybe I don’t need to make it for you!” She exclaimed, and the shadow of laughter that coloured her voice replaced the warmth that the coffee had been lending Thor. “If you’re just going to be an ass about it . . .”

“I’m sorry,” he said, still chuckling as he jostled her shoulder with his own. “I kind of regret tossing it into the sea. When we get back, could you . . .?”

“I made a whole pot,” Brunnhilde replied, taking a long, deliberate sip of hers. “Better hope no one steals the rest.” 

Thor sighed, setting aside his mug and looking back out at the horizon, where Brunnhilde’s gaze was trained. The sun was much higher than when she had first come down, and the streak along the water was growing fainter. 

“You still wanna do the town hall today?” 

Thor knew what this question really meant: do you feel up to being out and about today? Brunnhilde knew that there were still days where he felt too smothered to go about his business in town, talking to everyone as if everything was normal. Thor still woke up and stayed in bed for hours on end, trying to remember how to breathe with the full capacity of his lungs. He wouldn’t say a word, not when Korg shouted for him to come downstairs and help with the (now-broken) dishwasher, not when Brunnhilde knocked on his bedroom door to see if he was getting up anytime soon. She would close the door behind her and let him have the day, claiming to their neighbours that Thor was busy communing with what was left of the Avengers. He had never figured out how to thank her for those days, and had taken to keeping their neighbours out of her business as often as possible as a means of repayment. 

He nodded, mostly to himself, as he watched the sunlight break apart on the choppy seawater, scattering into sparkling shards. “I’ll be fine for the town hall.” 

“Alright then.” Brunnhilde moved along with his mood the way she always did, knowing when and how to catch him, and when and how to let him catch himself. “You wanna get some more coffee?” 

* * *

The town hall meetings in Nordedda took place in the enormous field on the edge of town that was often used for sports. They gathered on the grass with blankets, and the trio of elected leaders for the town organized snacks and tea for everyone. The meetings happened once every fortnight, and were proposed by the elected leaders early on in the settlement of the town; they had claimed it was vital to the prosperity of the Asgardians to voice any concerns as quickly as possible. There was an underlying understanding everyone had about the true motivation for the meetings: these were to avoid the kind of world that Hela and Odin had once created, ruling without restriction or consequence. 

Brunnhilde may have initially bristled at the implications of this, but Thor welcomed the opportunity with open arms. He would rather have his people ready to take him down in an emergency than risk becoming anything close to his father or sister. 

The late evening air was brisk as he and Brunnhilde waited for the few stragglers to leave the field, having finished airing their grievances ten minutes earlier. Mostly, it seemed to be about wanting to celebrate a pagan Earth holiday called All Hallows Eve. Korg was particularly passionate about it, or as passionate as Korg was about anything. 

“Something I miss about New York,” Thor said as they began their meander back to the truck they’ve parked at the edge of the field. “Shawarma, any time of day.”

“What the hell is shawarma?” Brunnhilde asked with a laugh. 

“It’s this - it’s sort of meat? In thin bread? I don’t really know, actually, but it’s delicious and I liked being able to get some whenever.” 

The Asgardians had spent a few days in New York while still relocating on Earth, searching for a decent spot to settle down. It had been a bizarrely painful experience: the city was brimming with memories of his brother. Lingering there had dredged up everything Thor had been trying to tamp down since he had first met Thanos, messy, uncomfortable things squirming through his guts.

So maybe he didn’t miss New York  _ that  _ much. 

Driving back into town was slow-going, their truck stuck behind the handful of other cars that were making their way home from the town hall. Brunnhilde was driving, her hand loose on the steering wheel as her other arm draped along the edge of the window. Thor leaned against the car door, staring out at the drifting grass in the emerging twilight. He could just make out the beginnings of stars in the sky, faint in the lingering fingerprints of sunset. The cool breeze brushed through his hair, and felt relieving against his skin. 

“You wanna visit him tonight?” 

Thor looked over at Brunnhilde, who had turned to ask him the question, barely paying attention to the slow traffic in front of them. The quirk of her mouth was a bit sad, and Thor studied her face for a long moment to catch sight of any reluctance in her expression. But it was just Brunnhilde, her brown eyes kind and searching as she awaited his answer. 

“Sure. Might as well.” 

So she took a different turn when the cars ahead of them finally began moving, driving off down a side road. The edge of a forest trailed along the side of the road, and the trees cast long shadows across the inside of the car, sneaking in through Thor’s window. The drive never took as long as he wished it did. 

Loki’s grave was a nice one, despite everything. Thor had ensured at least that much for his brother. It was not the grand temple that Loki would probably have erected for himself, but it was well-kept and lovingly made. Thor had taken the time to carve the words out himself, practicing for weeks until he could do it with a reasonably steady hand; he had not wanted to leave this up to anyone else. 

_ Loki Odinson _

_ Brother, Hero _

It was a silly Earthen tradition, carving stones to honour the dead. Having something tangible, however, to mark his brother’s existence felt like a lifted weight. He was not the only record of Loki’s life, or his death. 

“You’ve been brooding more lately,” Brunnhilde remarked after a few minutes of quiet. 

“Have I?” Thor didn’t look up from his brother’s gravestone. “I wonder why.”

“You’re not funny.” Her words lacked bite as she gently nudged her arm around his, looping them together, interlocking at the elbows. Through the layers of the long sleeves and the jackets they both wore, Thor could feel both the warmth and the strength in Brunnhilde’s arm, her muscles holding him solidly. 

“I miss him,” he said softly, leaning against her. “Which is ridiculous, because - well, you met him.”

“I did.”

“And he was terrible.”

“Yes.”

“He died for me.”

“He did.”

Thor tugged his arm from Brunnhilde’s hold, and wrapped it securely around her shoulders. The slight height difference between them made it easy to tuck himself over her, her curls tickling his chin. It would be completely dark out soon, and there were leftovers and enough chopped wood for a fire waiting for them at the cottage.

“Let’s go home,” he said. He knew he was not only talking to Brunnhilde. 

* * *

  
  


The locals in the area they had constructed Nordedda in - a people called “Norwegians” - were friendly. Brunnhilde was grateful for that. Dealing with them had been easy and straightforward: Asgardians were welcome on their land, as long as they didn’t trample over their world. 

The Norwegians had at least one thing that Asgardians were very used to: alcohol. Brunnhilde didn’t drink nearly as much as she once did - if she started to, she knew she’d get worried glances from Thor, ever the saint - but even she had enjoyed the beer and the clear, burning liquor that their little town imported from other Norwegian communities at least once a month. In true Asgardian fashion, they had shifted quickly from mourning to celebrating those lost, mostly in that allotted field on the edge of town. There was a space cleared for bonfires, and the sea was close enough that she could almost see it sparkling in the moonlight from where they danced in the nighttime darkness. 

Brunnhilde tossed back a gulp of vodka, and tilted her head back to laugh as it burned its way down her throat. She had been drinking because of Hilda for so long that it felt desperately liberating to be drinking  _ for  _ her. On the first of these mourning celebrations, when one of the three elected leaders cleared the bonfire space and set the pile of driftwood ablaze, wandering among the rushing of bodies and the flickering sparks, Brunnhilde had let herself drink as though Hilda was still there. She tipped back a beer and laughed with Korg, and imagined Hilda’s hand on her arm, her smile shining through the darkness, the way she had been a lifetime ago. It had never been easier to go to sleep than it had been that night, with the thought of Hilda somewhere else, drinking for her in the same way. 

Now, Brunnhilde braced a hand on Thor’s shoulder, holding herself steady as she cackled. He was glaring at her, but she could tell he didn’t mean it; his eyes were narrowed as though in annoyance, but he couldn’t dampen the warmth in them. 

“You did not  _ jump in _ ,” she said, her voice loud to cut through the cacophony of the celebration around them. Her throat would be a bit raw from yelling in the morning, but it was always a good sort of stiffness, the muscle memory of a night spent in joy. “You  _ fell _ , because you  _ tripped _ , and it was fucking  _ incredible _ !”

“I was trying to save -”

“What? Save the fish from drowning?” 

That coaxed a boom of laughter out of him, and Brunnhilde grinned in satisfaction, not caring who saw. There was something endlessly delightful in getting Thor to laugh, especially on a night like this. Even after a year and a half of getting by on this foreign coastline, he still spent many celebration nights nursing one or two drinks, a somber set to his mouth. It was beautiful to see him truly happy. 

Brunnhilde wanted to kiss him, but shoved that instinct aside as casually as she had been doing for months. The last thing she needed was to complicate the tenuous joy they had built for themselves here, and kissing this ridiculous, gorgeous demigod would be sure to complicate things, in part because Brunnhilde was certain that if she did it once she would never want to stop. 

She took another drink, the sting of it distracting, and was privately relieved when Korg came stumbling over with his odd, sluggish friend, yelling about the game of rugby people wanted to start up in the dark. 

“That sounds like a terrible idea,” she said with a sharp laugh. “With, you know, the giant fire blazing away.” 

“Maybe later,” Thor agreed. “After the fire’s been put out. It’ll be truly dark then, and far more dangerous.” 

“Right, because  _ more  _ dangerous is what we’re aiming for,” Brunnhilde said with a roll of her eyes. Thor just laughed again, and she hid her smile behind a long sip of beer. 

“It’ll be fun!” He insisted. Next to outright laughter, it was good to see that spark in his eyes again. She remembered it from their brief time on Sakaar: the glimmer he’d get, lips curling in defiant excitement as he readied himself to do something stupid. The look on his face after the burst of adrenaline after jumping out of a tower window or summoning a blast of lightning from the sky. It was Thor in his element, and watching him return to it was a constant source of reassurance for Brunnhilde. 

_ The sky overhead was a clear blue, still as the surface of a long-untouched pond. Thor was watching it as Brunnhilde slowly made her way across the docks to where he sat, his back propped up against one of the docking posts. She’d brought him coffee, which was quickly losing warmth as she trekked through the frigid morning air; Norway, it turned out, could be a very cold place. In the midst of a season the locals called “February”, despite the easing temperatures, there was still a distinctive chill in the air and frost on the ground.  _

_ “Hey, you,” Brunnhilde said, nudging Thor’s side with her boot. His eyes flicked to meet hers, and the blue of them in the early sunlight made it look as though he’d taken some of the sky above them into himself. “Coffee? It’s still kind of warm.” _

_ Thor took his mug without a word, just a small nod, and turned his gaze back to the sky. Brunnhilde leaned against the docking post opposite his, the wood digging into her shoulder blade. He’d been sitting there almost all morning; there was no way it was comfortable.  _

_ “This place is so much like his homeworld, you know.”  _

_ His words were quiet, but they caught Brunnhilde’s attention like an explosion. She frowned, worrying her lower lip between her teeth, as he continued.  _

_ “Ice, and frost, and cold . . . he would’ve hated it here.”  _

_ “Then he could live in Bali,” Brunnhilde said. “It’s supposed to be hot there.”  _

_ Thor didn’t laugh. In all fairness, it wasn’t that funny. He just sipped his coffee, and then deposited it on the dock. Brunnhilde tried not to find his disinterest in it concerning, and failed.  _

_ “Aren’t you cold?” She asked instead, eyeing his get-up: a thin hoodie, jeans, boots. No jacket, despite the chill, and no gloves, either. Just looking at him made her shiver a bit, and she drew her own flannel jacket a bit tighter around herself.  _

_ “It’s not bad,” Thor said with a small shrug. His gaze turned back to hers. “The coffee was warm.” She knew that was meant to be a thank you.  _

_ “I’m okay, you know,” he added after a moment of silence. Brunnhilde raised an eyebrow, which managed to get a quiet, hollow laugh out of him. Better than nothing. “I swear it. I’ve just been . . . thinking about him. About all of them.”  _

_ “I know you don’t want me to say this -” Brunnhilde began.  _

_ Thor gave her a bitter half-smile. “So why don’t you refrain from saying it?” _

_ “- but it’s not your fault,” she finished, glaring at him. “It’s not on you.” _

_ “I know,” he sighed, rubbing a hand across his eyes. He looked so tired, Brunnhilde was surprised he hadn’t fallen asleep right there on the docks. “I know, I just . . . I was supposed to protect them. And I can’t do that anymore.” _

_ “Who says you can’t?” _

_ “I do.” Thor looked up at her, resignation plain on his face. “I cannot protect my own people. All I can do is bury them.”  _

_ Brunnhilde did not have the words to respond to that. _

_ Walking back to the cottage to prepare for the funerary procession was a silent affair, Thor slightly ahead of Brunnhilde, his shoulders hunched.  _

_ Despite his claim, Thor was not going to bury anyone that day - not literally, at least. Loki Odinson was to have a hero’s funeral, as were all the Asgardians who had been lost to Thanos’  _ mercy _. The boats prepared for them were hand-crafted from the forest’s wood, carved meticulously over the past four months. The moment the Asgardians had begun to put down roots in Nordedda, the few craftsmen that still survived had begun work on the vessels. There was an eagerness to mourn, to have the space and the time to honour those they had lost. Brunnhilde had felt it too, when they were waiting to find some place to settle down in: the itch of unrest, always under her skin, knowing that their people remained unburied and lost in the cosmos. The need for the funeral, to give their spirits a chance to rest, was palpable.  _

_ Thor led the procession, as the last in the royal line. Though the town was gradually organizing an elected council of leaders, Thor was still relied upon as a figurehead for them all. Brunnhilde could see the weight of it as he walked, the burden he carried like a punishment for all he was unable to do. She hated watching him like that.  _

_ He allowed her to rest a hand on his arm as they marched with the boats, rolled along on carts they had borrowed from nearby Norwegian towns. The locals here were sympathetic to their plight, and had exchanged these supplies for help in erecting monuments to their own dead following the snap. Carving those edifices had hurt only slightly less than carving the patterns of their funerary vessels.  _

_ The boats were lined along the shore, just brushing the water. They were beautiful, laden with wreaths and bunches of flowers and tokens of remembrance. The locals had suggested that all the contents be of plant or animal - what people on Earth had termed “biodegradable.” They had said that, if it could go back into the Earth, it wouldn’t harm any of the wildlife in the sea’s shoreline or on its beaches. It hadn’t been a hard concession to agree to: the idea of preventing anything else from dying without cause, even a fish or a bird, had felt like a motivation to cling to for the Asgardians. Nothing needed to die here. This shoreline was a place for rebirth - it had to be.  _

_ Thor stood at the front of their small crowd. He was dressed all in white, mirroring the attire of his people as they watched him; it was the closest they could find to traditional mourning colours in Earthen shops. He wore his breastplate, which had mostly survived the fight in Wakanda, and whatever armour everyone else could find had been donned as well. Brunnhilde herself had dressed for battle, and stood ready for it, too. _

_ “These were good people.” Thor’s voice carried through the crowd, seemed to echo along the otherwise empty shoreline. The only other sound was the gentle lap of the sea against the edge of the funerary boats. “They were  _ our  _ people. Mothers, and fathers, and sisters, and brothers.” Brunnhilde held back a wince when she heard him force out the last word. “They healed, and they fought, and they - they sometimes made our lives a living hell.” A few dry laughs from the crowd. “But they were ours. And they continue to be, even as we let them go. Though they rest, we know they will watch over us as we rebuild a place they would have loved to see.”  _

_ Brunnhilde took her place next to two fishermen, and the three of them pushed their designated boat away from the shoreline, towards the open sea. They had to step into the shallows to get it moving properly, but Brunnhilde hardly noticed the sudden cold as her boots and calves were drenched in seawater. She could only watch as a drawing of a young woman, flowers twined in her long hair and a smile on her face, fluttered in the wind where it had been pinned to a wreath. It hadn’t escaped her notice that this was the first funeral she had attended for those she had fought alongside.  _

_ The Valkyrior had had no state funeral. Hilda had died in silence. This woman would not.  _

_ Their only remaining archer - a stout, frowning boy of hardly eighteen - struck a match and lit the end of an arrow. Nocking it, he aimed carefully. It struck the first boat, and it went up in flames. Brunnhilde had been worried the fire would be startling, and frightening. The idea of burning her people felt wrong upon first thought. But watching it now, all she could feel was free. The fire was cleansing away the blood, leaving behind fresh ground to build on. She took a deep gulp of sea air, tasted the salt on her tongue.  _

_ The next arrow missed.  _

_ “I - I’m sorry.” The archer scrubbed at his eyes, and Brunnhilde could see from here that he was crying. “Let me just -” _

_ “Don’t worry,” she heard Thor say quietly, moving the boy’s hands down from lighting another arrow tip. “Let me.”  _

_ “Thor -” she began, striding forwards, but he caught her raised hand in his.  _

_ “It’s alright.” He wasn’t smiling, but there was something in his eyes that Brunnhilde hadn’t seen in a long time. A little glimmer, dancing in the sky-blue. He gently pushed her hands down, freeing his once more. “I can do this much for them.” _

_ He turned, planting his feet on the rough, stony sand, staring out at the horizon. Brunnhilde watched him tense, every muscle in his body taut, ready to pounce. And then, gradually, he relaxed. It was as if he offered himself up, tilted his head back an inch or two and let the wind over the sea rush around him, an invisible current.  _

_ The sky overhead darkened slowly, clouds creeping over the blue, blotting out the wintery sunlight. The crowd drew closer together, watching Thor and Brunnhilde and the ever-stretching horizon over the sea, the remains of their people waiting out on those boats. Waiting to be released.  _

_ Brunnhilde had never wanted to describe a lightning strike as tender before that moment. But as it curled down from the heavens, crackling energy like the reaching arm of a god, and touched the next boat, she could see it no other way. It was a caress of bright, deadly light, and the boat burst into flames at its touch. The other ten went up similarly, all of them blazing away merrily on the sea, slowly cracking apart to sink beneath the growing waves.  _

_ Thor and Brunnhilde waited there for a long moment, as the crowd slowly departed. When she put a hand on the crook of his elbow, Thor looked at her, and that glimmer was burning behind his eyes.  _

_ She just offered him a small smile as they made their way back up to the road, tiny sparks of their loved ones drifting around them before falling into the sea.  _

  
  


Now, nearly two years later, Thor was still looking at her with that glimmer in his eyes. He gave her shoulder a soft shove, and Brunnhilde relented and returned his grin. 

“Fine, rugby in the dark,” she said, as if she was ever going to say no. “But I’m team captain.”

“No, no,  _ Thor’s  _ team captain,” Korg said, as if he were explaining something desperately obvious to her. 

“There has to be two teams,” Brunnhilde replied, pretending to size Thor up over the rim of her cup. “He can captain the other one.”

“You sure you want to do that?” Thor asked, clearly catching onto this game. The way he began eyeing her made Brunnhilde’s stomach flip. “Because I’m a god at rugby.”

“You call yourself a god of anything other than thunder one more time, and I swear I will never speak to you again.”

“Got it.” 

“Good.”

“I’m a  _ demi _ -god at rugby.”

The fire was stamped out as parents led their children home, and teenagers were ushered away when they tried to stay past curfew. Brunnhilde took off her jacket, ready for the game ahead, and Thor took off his. He wore only a t-shirt underneath, and Brunnhilde silently thanked the universe for making him so naturally warm, and for giving him arms that were perfectly capable of lifting her up. 

The darkness engulfed them as people put out lanterns and flashlights, letting their eyes adjust to the nighttime. Brunnhilde could only see Thor’s silhouette against the starlight, shifting restlessly in front of her. 

“Ready?” He called. She could hear the grin in his voice. 

“Ready to destroy you.” Brunnhilde made sure for him to hear the smile in hers. 

“Go!” Korg yelled, and they were off. 

The game ran quick, despite the darkness. Tackling was still permitted, naturally, and she was planning to take full advantage of that. As he chased after one of - well, someone she thought was her teammate - Brunnhilde tackled Thor for all she was worth, driving him into the dirt. They rolled over the grass, flattening some of it in their wake, a little ways away from the rest of the game. She hovered over him, her palms planted on either side of his head, and she couldn’t help the cackle that burst out of her chest like a firework. Thor’s hands were on her waist, probably to try and lift her off of him. 

“Told you I’d fucking -”

Thor tugged her down, gentler than she had ever thought possible, and kissed her. 

He missed slightly, in the dark, and his lips pressed firmly to the corner of her mouth. Brunnhilde flinched back a few inches, baffled, before yanking him up towards her and seizing his lips in a bruising kiss. They were warm, like the rest of him, like his thighs between hers, like his chest where her other hand rested. 

When they parted for air, Brunnhilde let herself breathe deeply against his collarbone, ducking her head beneath his chin. His hand slid from her hip to the small of her back, steady and solid. Laughter and yells echoed around them in the field, people playing the game, entirely unaware of the world-shattering event that had happened right at their feet. 

“D’you - d’you wanna finish the game?” She whispered. 

Thor laughed, long and hard, and the feel of it rumbled comfortably through his chest, up into her fingers. It was almost better than feeling his heartbeat. 

“Yes! The game! I think you said you were going to destroy me?” 

“Yeah,” she said, a bit breathless. Thor clambered up into a sitting position, and she slid down to rest more firmly on his thighs. “I am.”

“Good!” He was still laughing, and she clambered to her feet, tugged him up after her. “Good.” He whispered that word, just for her. 

* * *

  
  


Bruce turned up on a Wednesday with the promise of ruining Thor’s life. 

Nearly five years after the snap, Thor didn’t get frequent visitors. He knew some of the team was still busy - Natasha, Steve and Sam checked in when they could, but they were busy so often with not letting the rest of Earth slide into chaos that Thor thought they probably thought of Nordedda as a place conveniently less likely to do that. Tony had only come around a handful of times, busy rebuilding his own life. (Thor wished he’d come more often, though, as much as they had argued in the past. Morgan Stark was a welcome ally in annoying her father.) 

Bruce was the one who had come most often. Brunnhilde pretended to find it frustrating, since she claimed he and Bruce together was “a recipe for disaster” and claimed that she “didn’t have time to babysit idiots.” But Thor could tell she was joking; she brought Bruce beers when they all sat on the docks together, and she didn’t do that for just anybody. 

He was usually human when he came, although a year ago he’d managed to shift into the Hulk to help with some manual labour around town. He confided in Thor and Brunnhilde that he had been experimenting with meditation, and was working towards actual balance between the two distinct parts of himself. He still preferred his human form, though; usually he claimed it was because he was easier to buy clothes for than the Hulk, but Thor saw right through that. Bruce was relieved to have his body to himself, without threat of self-betrayal. 

On the particular Wednesday that Bruce turned up to ruin Thor’s life, he was dressed down in jeans and a shirt that proclaimed him a lover of New York City. (Likely a gift of Tony’s.) He came into town in a rented car, dwarfed by the trucks of the Asgardians. He parked carefully between them, and walked with an usual purpose towards Thor and Brunnhilde’s cottage. 

Since stepping back further from leadership, Thor had enjoyed working on the docks and staying with Brunnhilde. Life like this was simpler than he had ever thought his could be, but he found it mostly suited him. He could still go out to empty fields, or on fishing vessels, and summon lightning. It was like breathing to him now, an extension of himself. Brunnhilde insisted on going with him on these excursions, even if he thought it unsafe for her. She said she liked seeing him in his element, whatever that meant. They slept in the same bed, woke up together; she made coffee, and he usually made toast or something else that was hard to ruin; they would linger on the docks at sunset and watch the sea. Her rugby team, now that the town had really gotten into the game, was consistently beating his at every opportunity. Sometimes, he would take her on picnics, or they would go hiking through the woods and mountains that decorated these northern countries. Once, they had even travelled to Paris, walked through old Earthen museums. They had found paintings of themselves, or what humans had thought they looked like thousands of years ago. Brunnhilde thought her depictions as a milky-skinned blonde were hysterical, and Thor had surprised her on her birthday with a (truly terrible) painting of her as she was here, flannel jacket and all, wielding her sword as she burst through a cloudy sky. 

Oh, and kissing Brunnhilde every day? That was perhaps the best part of Thor’s new life. 

So this cottage was their home, and Bruce knew to knock and wait for Brunnhilde to answer. She did, wearing pyjamas, her hair a dark halo of messy curls around her face. She grinned down at him and jerked her chin, gesturing for him to follow her inside. “You’ll never guess who’s here!”

“Banner!” Thor spotted him the moment he reached the top of the stairs, which he then bounded down excitedly. “It’s been so long since the last time you were here, Ulla’s been asking me to invite you so she can talk to you about some physics thing or another -”

But Bruce apparently did not have time to discuss one of their council members’ interest in physics. He shifted from foot to foot, hesitant. Slowly, Brunnhilde and Thor were both watching him with twin expressions of wariness. 

“What’s wrong?” Thor asked, though some part of him knew. Of course he knew, watching the way Bruce looked up at him like he was already asking for forgiveness. 

“Look, I don’t wanna do this,” Bruce began. “But they . . .  _ we  _ think it’s a good idea. We think it’ll work, it’s not a total long shot, and we thought you had the right to -”

“What are you talking about?” Thor asked, frowning. He was starting to feel very underdressed, in his flannel pyjama pants and old t-shirt he’d stolen from Brunnhilde. Bruce looked ready to deliver a death sentence, and Thor was standing in his living room in reindeer slippers. 

“We think we have a way to reverse the snap.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


He was butchering a pile of firewood when Brunnhilde came to find him. Of course she knew just where to look for him. 

“You know, people were gonna use that,” she remarked as she approached him. In the odd evening sunlight of May, she looked as though she was made of light, the orange glow of the hours-long sunset illuminating the soft brown of her skin. Thor wished he could just stay in this clearing and watch Brunnhilde like this forever, never having to return to the world where there were expectations and failures waiting for him. 

“It’ll still burn,” he said petulantly, striking again with another swing of the axe he’d grabbed on his way out of the cottage. 

He’d given Bruce half an hour to talk, though he couldn’t help shaking his head through most of it. The prospects were too great and too horrible to wrap his head around. At some point, Brunnhilde had opted to crack open some beers, and she and Bruce had talked the plan out while Thor sat on the couch and watched from the sidelines. Selfish as he was, he wished she could be the hero he was expected to be. He had seen what she was capable of, and was certain she could do a better job than him. The world needed a Valkyrie, not a demigod of thunder and rugby who had spent the better part of the past five years wallowing in the shadow of the deaths he could not prevent. 

Bruce had explained the time travel theory, the development of the technology with a man called Lang who Thor had never met, the insane plan to reverse at least some of the damage Thanos had done. He had talked most of the afternoon, going over every detail, answering every question Brunnhilde had. At some point they had opened some leftovers, and that was when Thor had stood, grabbed the axe in their yard, and gotten in the truck. He was around the block before either of them could even get out the door to ask where he was going. 

At least chopping firewood gave him something productive to do, but even that had become useless as he more or less destroyed the pile he was working with. He was wallowing in a clearing he and Brunnhilde had taken their picnics in sometimes, among the tall fir trees and the few wildflowers hardy enough to grow this far north. 

“Look, Thor, we have to talk about the possibility -”

“Of what?” He shot back, dropping the axe. “Of getting everyone back? Of risking everything we have  _ built  _ here, everything we  _ have  _ -” 

“We had people die in the snap, too! We lost so much, we can’t just -” 

“And we could lose even  _ more _ ! I cannot risk even more death on the notion that maybe, just maybe -”

“So we sit here and ignore the possibility of bringing back innocent people?! We settle for whatever the  _ hell  _ we’re doing here when we could -”

“You don’t know these people, Brunnhilde! I have fought with them, I have seen the risks they are willing to take, believe me when I say that Banner is making their plan seem more stable than it is -”

“We can’t pretend this is fine!” Brunnhilde’s chest heaved as she caught her breath, having hardly paused in her tirade. “There are people who should be alive who aren’t, and we owe it to them and everyone they know, everyone who is still mourning them, to do  _ something _ !” 

“And if we lose all of this?” Thor’s voice ached from shouting, and his chest ached from the sudden weight burdening it once more. He could not keep carrying these burdens, or he was certain it would crush him. “Look at what we have built, Brunnhilde.” He could see in her face, plain as day, that she knew he was not just talking about the town. 

She drew closer, placed an open palm against his jaw. He held still, let her touch ground him. He had felt her a thousand times, reveled in her kiss and the caress of her hands, but this was the most he had truly needed it in a long time. She stood on her toes to kiss him, first on the mouth then on the cheek. She leaned back, staring up at him, and he sighed and rested his forehead against hers. 

“I  _ cannot  _ risk you,” he said softly, lifting his hands to hold her by the shoulders. “He cannot have the chance to take anyone else. I cannot give him that.” 

“But think of it,” she whispered, her brown eyes wide and imploring. “Just, just for a moment, think about it. The snapped Asgardians, back with their families. Ulla’s husband, for one. Heida, Bjorn, Aella, Inga.” She breathed the names that she had only known for a time, moving slowly through the stars, away from the wreckage of Asgard. The people she had watched dissolve into ash, waiting for a saviour who would never come. 

“It would not bring back my brother,” Thor said, and knew the second the words left his mouth how selfish they sounded. But Brunnhilde knew selfishness, had tasted its bitter tang for years before she met him, and drunk it down like sweetwine. So she did not scold him, or scream at him, or call him a fool. She just shook her head, twice, the briefest confirmation. 

“It wouldn’t. But do you know what it would do?” 

“What?”

And then she smiled, the smile of a warrior, the wolfish glint of a true Valkryior in her eyes. “It would piss off the bastard that killed him.” 

“Revenge?” Thor responded, though he did not stop the callous laugh that bubbled out of his throat, burning like liquor. “Really? I thought we were better than that.” 

“We’re what we need to be,” Brunnhilde said, tangling her fingers in his hair, holding him as though they were about to run into battle. Perhaps they were. “And right now, we need to be on the road with Banner.” 

“And you -”

“You’ve seen me fight a god. You really think I can’t hold my own against a murderous philosopher?” 

“Gods, I love you.” 

Brunnhilde laughed, and the sound fractured like the sunrise on the morning sea, reflecting all around him. Here, in their clearing, he let himself sink into the sound of her, the feel of her hands in his hair, the proud, furious tilt of her jaw as she watched him. He knew his answer before he had opened his mouth. 

“Let’s go kill a Titan.” 

“Let’s.” 

**Author's Note:**

> the title of this in my draft was "thor's horrible, no good, very bad unspecified period of time". i'm writing this before i come up with the actual title, so i hope it's a lot better than that. 
> 
> so like thor's situation in both films felt frustrating to me bc it was like they had uno-reverse-carded all the development he underwent in raganarok. thor doesn't need mjolnir anymore because he's grown past the need to base his worth as a person and leader on the legacy of his father's colonial victories? give him Big Axe so he can Hit Things, and spend like 1/3 of the movie trying to get it. learns to let go of his father and asgard bc he has healthy coping mechanisms and ppl to support him???? loki dies and now we can make fat jokes about thor bc idk he eats salt and vinegar chips now. idk man even asgard being forced to reckon with its legacy of colonialism kind of gets shunted to the side so they can just take over part of norway with no examination of that lmao, i have Thoughts 
> 
> also brunnhilde is incredible and her lack of screentime and narrative agency is a travesty. give her literally anything to do, i'm begging you. 
> 
> so here they are !!!! and i love them !!!!!! thor and brunnhilde are allowed to be in love, and it's not regressive to allow a black woman to have a romantic subplot with the male lead, especially if she maintains narrative agency and gets a character arc !!!! bi women are allowed to fall in love with men and that's okay and doesn't reduce her presence as a non-het character !!!!! i'm late to thorkyrie week 2020 by literally 48 hours i can't believe this !!!!! lmao 
> 
> hope everybody enjoys, and just know that i am hard at work on the next few installments of this (infinitely-growing lmao) series between assignments (and during my uni zoom calls bc my prof thinks i'm taking notes). tysm for reading, you're all darlings and i'm sending you love and luck in these trying times <3 <3 <3 <3 
> 
> hmu on tumblr @starmunches, or @mallowswriting if you wanna see smaller pieces i post on there, request any drabbles, or ask questions about this au bc wow the lore is Building Up 
> 
> (PS i'm still sad that this ship is called thorkyrie, which is fine, and not valor, which is an incredible pun)


End file.
